Re: Unfriendly handling of pg_hba SSL options with SSL off

Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> writes:
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 18:59, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>> It's not clear to me what behavior you are proposing. Would we
>> disregard the hostssl line or treat it as an error?

> It would absolutely have to be treat it as an error. another option
> would be to throw a more specific warning at that place, and keep the
> rest of the code the same.

> We can't *ignore* hostssl rows in ssl=off mode, that would be an easy
> way for an admin to set up a system they thought was secure but
> isn't...

No, I don't see that it's a security hole. What would happen if the
line is ignored is you couldn't make connections with it. I think you
are positing that it'd be a potential security problem if a connection
attempt fell through that line and then succeeded with some later line
that had less-desirable properties --- but if your pg_hba.conf contents
are like that, you already have issues, because a non-SSL-enabled client
is going to reach that later line anyway.

Nonetheless, it's extremely confusing to the admin to ignore such a
line, and that's not a good thing in any security-sensitive context.

regards, tom lane